Large Scale Central

Learning Process

I cleaned the cylinder covers with brake clean and removed all of the old flaking paint, and any oil that had accumulated on the covers, inside and out, scuffed the surface with a brown 3M pad, laid down a couple coats of etching primer, and re-painted with the same enamel paint that I used initially. I’ll see how it handles the heat later this week. Been having to wait to paint due to storms and high humidity levels last couple of weeks.

Definatly been crappy humidity wise. Been misrably sticky inside the plant this week. Glad to off for the next 3 days. Got my 40 in for the week! If you can set the covers outside on a hot sunny afternoon this weekend, do so, the sun will help bake and cure the paint for free! Mike

How are you coming with your steamer Mike?? Haven’t heard anything from you in awhile. Here is my new loco. Decided that while the Aster was nice, its going to be awhile before I have a railway at home suitable to run and engine that needs BIG curves to run well. So some more horse trading happened and I ended up with a nice Roundhouse Fowler 0-6-2 with tender. I will be upgrading the lights to the big Darjeeling style lamps that RH sells as extra parts. RC control as well here soon, she is manual control for now. Hope all is well, I am well into planning a larger loop that ties into that small raised line I built. The new larger loop will closely follow the old track bed of my ground level line other than I will go inside the tree instead of around it at the edge of the garden area. A raise line that goes outside of the tree will get into my space to put my boat into winter parking with my truck. Mike T

Roundhouse Sammie from Mike Wlezien on Vimeo.

Been working on the veggie garden, drying herbs, and pulling up the plants getting ready for winter.

Check this out, it was originally shot a couple months ago, before I repainted the cylinder covers, I had a hard time remembering how to post from Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/241446848

And a big Thanks to Joe Zullo for helping me post the actual video.

Huge thumbs up Mike!! Looks great! The Fowler went down under in trade for a Billy kit for my friend, who gave me back my old Merlin Mayflower. Which has gotten tons of running since, on both my railway and at several steam ups. Working on raising funds to get another Bertie. Learning to stick to smaller engines for my own railway. I do have one larger one, a scratch built 2-6-4 built by Ernie Noa called Mississippi, built to roughly 7/8ths scale he says but looks good with most of my rolling stock. Meths fired she still needs the burner fuel tanks reinstalled and a draft fan to get her running again. I couldnt pass her up for the price. Way to big to run at home, She is my steam up engine once running again.

Very nice, Mike

Thanks, I can see why you wanted Sammie in that color, matches your passenger coach! I picked up that steamer at a steam up in Monticello IL back in October. We had steaming outdoors if you could stand the cold and sleet, and indoors in his garage on the portable layout. Along with lunch and dinner. Was a great time. You would have had a blast. I put several good runs in with my Mayflower both indoors and thru a sleet storm outdoors with a plume that trailed several cars behind the locomotive. Mike

I had Sammie out in the snow today @ +2 degrees. Got a 15 minute run, even though I had to help it along a couple times because the wheels were just spinning. Even with that light fluffy snow we got on Sunday, it had problems pushing the plow. I finally pulled out a broom and cleaned off the tracks, but there were still spots that had ice built up on the rails. Too bad these engines don’t come with a built-in sander. The extra weight alone might help.

Bought this Butane/Propane canister back in June, along with an adapter nozzle that I bought from Jason, back when I purchased the Sammie, and tried to use it today. Didn’t work. The nozzle adapter doesn’t stick down low enough to make contact with the nozzle on the can